


threw out our cloaks and our daggers

by fireflyslove



Series: only see daylight [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Nonsense, Gen, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Redeemed Ben Solo, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, That's Not How The Force Works, The Force, WHY AM I WRITING REYLO FIC WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??, might be romantic might be platonic depends who you ask
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22125352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflyslove/pseuds/fireflyslove
Summary: RISE OF SKYWALKER SPOILERS:After the end of the battle on Exegol, the gathered ghosts of the Jedi help Rey save a life and make a choice.OR:Your friendly neighborhood fic dealer once again presents a fic with the label "What the hell is this??" slapped on it.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo
Series: only see daylight [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592596
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	threw out our cloaks and our daggers

**Author's Note:**

> ... ... ... ok listen, Adam Driver is an incredibly persuasive actor. I blame that for this fic. If I tell myself it's not Reylo it'll be fine. 
> 
> Meta you probably don't care about but that matters to me as context for this fic: Rey isn't, and won't be, in love with Ben, she's possibly aro, but we'll burn that bridge later. Ben's in love with her, or will be very soon, the Solo men are 'hard and fast' types when it comes to falling in love. Ben and Kyle Ron are two separate people. The next fic in this series is gonna address that issue, but first, you know, gotta make sure the guy's alive to be able to redeem. Also he's gonna get punched in the face by Poe. 
> 
> IT WAS ALLLLLLL THE DYAD IN THE FORCE/FORCE BOND SHIT THAT HOOKED ME, THAT'S ALL I'M SAYIN'. 
> 
> Title from Taylor Swift's "Daylight"

Rey knew she had died. She felt her spirit, her life force, her soul, whatever you wanted to call it, the essence of her being, she felt it leave her body. She could see the ghosts of her teachers, and all those voices who had so recently fortified her spread around her in a great circle, a thousand generations of Jedi. 

She recognized only a few of them, the ones closest to her, Luke, Leia, and a few other faces whose appearance scratched fuzzily at the back of her memory. She looked around for Ben, surely he must be here, she could still sense him through their bond, but he was nowhere in sight. 

Luke held out his hand to her, and she reached forward to take it when she was violently ripped from the netherworld and back into her body. Warmth poured through her, a bright hot light that suffused her entire being, originating from a firm pressure on her ribs. Rey twitched her fingers, and then her eyes focused on something only a few inches from her face.

Ben’s face (and it was strange how easily she could see Ben Solo, not Kylo Ren, in his face), stricken with pain, stared back at her, dark eyes wide. 

“Ben!” she said, reaching up to touch his face, she wasn’t quite sure he was real. 

He smiled, and then they were kissing. It was instinctual, Rey would have time to reflect later. Not something romantic, but rather a desperate need to touch this other person to whom she was so closely tied, to feel that he was alive. 

She recognized what he was doing as it killed him. His fall at the Emperor’s hand had nearly cost him his life, and it had taken almost all the strength he had left to climb back up. What little remained he had poured into her. 

But… no. 

_ No.  _

She would not let him. 

She felt his life slipping out of his body as he fell from her arms toward the ground, and she yelled, a sound that might have been  _ “NO!”  _ or might have just been wordless rage. Rey reached out, to the living Force and  _ pulled.  _

The thousands of gathered ghosts channeled their energy into her, and she pushed it into Ben. It wasn't much, not even as much as he had given her, but it was enough to keep him alive. He gasped a breath, and relief flowed through Rey. 

“Thank you,” she said, looking up. She couldn’t see the ghosts now, but she could feel them, and then they were gone. 

Rey became aware of their wider surroundings then, the building was disintegrating around them, and she had minutes to get them to a ship off this planet before they were crushed by falling debris. It took far too long to get to her feet, and only at the last moment did she look around for the fallen ‘sabers. She gathered them quickly, and then bent to pull Ben up. He was conscious, but barely, and she supported most of his weight as she dragged them toward the exit. She was so far beyond exhausted that time lost all meaning, only putting one foot in front of the other. 

Ben was badly injured, at least one of his legs, if not both of them, were broken, and she could feel something very wrong in his ribs. It was a miracle (though probably not, the Force must have intervened) that he had survived the fall at all. 

Finally, after long agonizing minutes, she reached the X-Wing. She realized the problem immediately. The X-Wing was only meant to fit one person, its pilot, and there was no way that Ben was going to be able to fly the TIE fighter he had come in on out, so she would have to somehow fit him in the X-Wing. She hauled him bodily into the seat, wincing at his quiet groan of pain, and then pushed him down so he was sitting on the floor, then squeezed herself in behind him. The cockpit roof closed, and she fired up the engines, taking off as the ground crumbled beneath the ship. 

Though Rey knew they were alive, she could sense it in the Force, it was still a relief to hear Poe’s voice, Finn’s voice. Poe’s and Rey’s X-wings and the  _ Falcon _ were the last ships to beat a retreat as the remains of the Final Order’s fleet fell victim to Exegol’s gravity. 

She was following them back to base when she realized who exactly she was crammed into the cockpit with. This was Ben Solo, to be sure, but until yesterday, he had been Kylo Ren, and Kylo Ren had done… atrocious things. That could be dealt with later. For now, she had to keep him alive. 

“Poe,” Rey said over the comms. “I have to make a detour. I’ll meet you back at base as soon as I can.”

Poe didn’t ask why, though Rey knew he was burning with curiosity. Rey broke away from the motley fleet’s retreat path. She racked her brain for a place to take Ben where he would be cared for, but where he wouldn’t be killed on sight. Finally it came to her: the caretakers of Ahch-to. 

She pointed the X-Wing’s nose back toward the place where it had been for two dozen years, and leaned just a little harder on the engines.

-

The Lanai flocked to the X-wing as it landed on Ahch-to, and Rey popped the cockpit roof open. She wavered on her feet as she tried to haul Ben out, and the Lanai pushed her hands away gently, pulling Ben out themselves. He screamed as they twisted his leg, and muttered to each other in their strange language. One turned to Rey, and said something. She didn’t understand the words, but the Force showed their meaning. 

“Go,” the creature said. “He will be cared for, but there is much you must do.”

She nodded, and sighed. As much as her heart told her to stay here and help him, she could do nothing for him, and her friends— her family, needed her. 

She closed the cockpit roof, and left. 

-

Coming back to the Resistance base was like stepping out of a dream. As soon as her feet hit solid ground, a wave of exhaustion swept through Rey. She caught herself on the side of Luke’s X-Wing, and wavered a few steps. A hand under each elbow steadied her, and she looked up, Poe and Finn had come running from the gathered crowd, and she pulled them both into a tight embrace, regardless of any of their wounds.

“You died,” Finn said, after the babble of greetings was over. “I felt it.”

“I think I might have,” Rey agreed. “It’s a long story, and I’m too tired to tell it right now.”

“You never did say what you were going to tell her,” Poe said, a smug look on his face. 

Finn rolled his eyes. “It’s nothing, Poe, really. You’re making a bigger deal out of it than it needs to be.”

Poe  _ hmph _ ed, but let the subject drop for the moment. 

-

After getting her wounds tended to, Rey sought her bed. There would be time for celebration and mourning later, now she was just bone weary. 

She was asleep before her head even hit the pillow.

Rey slept for almost three days. When she woke, she was disoriented, for a split second confused by the lush tropical planet she was on, rather than the wind-and-salt of another place entirely. She sat up, pushing her hand through her hair. Someone, at some point while Rey had been sleeping, had taken pains to let her hair down and remove her boots. She sent a thought of thanks in their general direction. 

She reached for her boots, and everything that had happened came rushing back. 

_ Ben. _

She reached along her Force bond, to find him and found… nothing.

Ben was gone. 

It wasn’t as if he were dead, she remembered what that felt like, but it was as if he had never existed in the first place, his side of their dyad was a complete void. Only the existence of the bond itself was left to prove that he had ever been real.

Ben Solo had vanished.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found anywhere dyads in the force are sold @fireflyslove.


End file.
